The Web-based, free-to-play, massively multiplayer game Glitch is headed by a …

He wanted to build a game that was different from anything else he had played. He wanted to start a company to build that game and then make it available to everyone in the world for free. He wanted to push the boundaries of how people play games together.

Unfortunately, his idea came in 2002, when few venture capitalists wanted to invest in making games, much less free ones.

At the time, Butterfield's startup, Ludicorp, was running out of cash. Things had gotten so bad the company was about to sell off furniture to make payroll. In desperation, the developers took a prototype social network side-project and enhanced it so that it allowed users to upload and share photos. This project eventually turned into Flickr—and it became so popular that Yahoo purchased Ludicorp in 2005.

Butterfield stayed on at Yahoo for a few years, but his original dream still pulled at him. By 2009, venture capitalists were now tripping over each other to fund free-to-play online games, so Butterfield seized his chance. He founded Tiny Speck and set up offices in San Francisco and Vancouver.

Butterfield had been impressed by the success of casual, browser-based games such as Farmville, but he didn't find the games themselves terribly interesting. Despite being hosted on the world's largest social networks, they tended to be primarily single-player experiences. Sure, you could send bundles of grain to another player's farm, but you couldn't watch them farming and then step in to help them out.

Stewart Butterfield in his office at Tiny Speck

Way back in 1982, one of the first games to attempt a collaborative multiplayer experience was LucasArts' Habitat, a side-scrolling adventure where many players explored a single world. Just prior to the founding of Ludicorp, Stewart had read the seminal essay "The Lessons from Habitat," a post-mortem analysis of the game by its original developers. One of the most interesting things about Habitat was that the players themselves came up with new gameplay ideas together. Recreating this "emergent" behavior has long been a dream of massively multiplayer online (MMO) game developers, but it has rarely been achieved.

Tiny Speck's own game was called Glitch. Taking Habitat as an inspiration, the developers started crafting a world that would be more about player collaboration than combat. In fact, there would be no combat at all.

Glitch was intriguing, so I recently dropped by the Tiny Speck offices in Vancouver to find out more about both the company's game design ideas and the technology used to bring them to life.

No combat? So what do you do?

Designing a game without combat turned out to be difficult. What would players spend most of their time doing? The Glitch designers decided to beef up things like crafting, where players combine raw materials they find in the world to create new and useful objects. The game features dozens of different skills to learn, from baking to meditation, with many different sub-ranks within each skill.

In addition, the player can interact with almost every object in the world. Pigs can be patted or nibbled; just like the ones in the Simpsons "Garden of Eden" episode, they are unharmed by the process. A player with a rake, a watering can, and some beans can plant a patch of dirt, then come back later to pick fruit off the tree growing there. When many players do this all at once, the flora in any area can change daily.

Glitch also has quests, handed out by a smiling stone that floats at the top center of the game screen. Quests consist of everything from exploring new areas to interacting with other players using objects you've crafted yourself. When you complete quests you get experience points, which let your character gain levels. You also gain energy, which is important, since almost everything you do in the game drains energy. If you run out completely, your character will descend into "Hell," where the only escape is to crush grapes with your feet until you are allowed back into the "real" world. Little tombstones that occasionally dot the countryside are indicators that not everyone is careful with their energy usage.

The fun factor

The key question isn't about game theory or design, though. It's about whether Glitch is fun to play. The answer is a surprising yes. Despite the lack of combat, there's plenty for your character to do. The floating stone periodically hands out new quests and reminds you when you have finished learning a new skill. Skills continue to increase while you are offline—as in Eve Online—making it worthwhile to log back in even if you've been away from the game for a bit.

Where the game could really become interesting is with player interaction. Some of the quests have been designed to stimulate this sort of activity, such as the quest where you have to put on Wax Lips and blow kisses at other players while under the influence of Garlic Breath. The surreal and funny ways that objects can be combined reminded me a bit of old adventure games like The Secret of Monkey Island—games in which there was also no combat (unless you count "insult swordfighting").

Game design and player interaction

The main problem with crafting a game world and waiting for players to create emergent behavior is that the first thing they do is try to kill one another. Even when the game doesn't allow player-vs-player combat, people still find ways to annoy each other, such as killing important non-player characters like quest-givers. None of this is possible in the Glitch game world.

Playing Glitch in a non-maximized browser window

It's sometimes hard for players to shake the competitive urge. Originally, rocks could be mined by only one player at a time, leading to frustration for the player who clicked a millisecond too slowly. The designers changed this so that multiple players could mine simultaneously, but people complained that other players were "using up" the rocks too quickly. A new system was implemented where having multiple people mining gave each player more ore than if they had worked individually. Finally, a quest was added to reward collaborative miners still further.

Tuning the quests and interactions to provide the right level of difficulty and reward was complicated. In beta testing, the development team found that while singing to butterflies was repetitive and boring, people would still sing to butterflies obsessively—because it provided small but guaranteed amounts of experience. The devs tried to balance this by making singing to animals cost energy, but then players simply farmed huge numbers of girly drinks (which made animals interactions cost no energy) and continued to grind the same thing again and again. The girly drinks were then nerfed, and people immediately complained.

"We realized that if we incentivized things that were inherently boring," Butterfield told me, "people would do them again and again—it showed up in the logs—but that they would secretly hate us."

Just another day at the office.

Player housing is implemented, with an apartment-style design that lets anyone have their own home without cluttering up the landscape. You can decorate your home and grow things in your own garden on the patio. Unlike many games, in Glitch it does not take long to save up enough cash for a place of your own, though making it look less than spartan will take considerable effort.

Funny little touches to the game litter the game. For example, getting the right papers to let you purchase an apartment requires multiple trips to the Department of Administrative Affairs (Ministry of Departments) where you spend much time in a waiting area while bureaucratic lizard men play Farmville on tiny computers.

The administrator will be with you shortly. Please wait in the designated waiting area.

I hadn't logged into the game in awhile, and when I did I saw that my in-game mailbox was wiggling and jiggling, waiting for me. At first glance I thought: "Oh no! Spammers have infiltrated the Glitch servers!" But when I read more closely, I realized the developers were just pulling my leg:

$$$ CHEAP RX AVAILABLE NOW $$$
MAIL ORDER PURPLE FLOWERS, HAIRBALL FLOWERS, NO-NO POWDER
FULLY LEGAL* PRESCRIPTIONS** FROM REAL DOCTORS***
TROUBLE PLEASURING YOUR GLITCH GIRLFRIEND/BOYFRIEND/
FRIEND-OF-VARIABLE-OR-UNDISCLOSED-OR-UNDEFINED-GENDER?
WORRY NO LONGER WITH ALL NATURAL RUBEWEED ENHANCEMENTS.
$$$ CHEAP AND LEGAL* $$$
CALL NOW
* May not be as legal as advertised.
** Prescriptions may be scrawled on bar napkins in crayon.
*** May not be a doctor. Possibly just a piggy we refer to as
Doctor Piggles who signs prescriptions (see above) with his foot
and actually truth be told it is pretty adorable.

Interesting concept for a game, but unfortunately it doesnt look like something I would enjoy at all. However I do know a few people who are not into gaming as much as I am and it looks like something they would dig.

Interesting concept for a game, but unfortunately it doesnt look like something I would enjoy at all. However I do know a few people who are not into gaming as much as I am and it looks like something they would dig.

There's a certain subset of games that make me feel this way, but yeah... "This looks great! I mean, for someone else."

I'm exactly the kind of person this game is for. I've been playing it a little over a month, off and on. I can have long gaming sessions without paying money but then can go for a week without logging into the game with no repercussions. I can put my gnome out in front of my house with a snarky comment or go to my friends house to leave a sammich on her front step. And even though it's not locked to her, she gets them. The community has been extremely friendly and that becomes as engaging as the quests. I hope to see the game continue to evolve and improve as more players get involved.

This isn't exactly the first combatless MMO that is based heavily on crafting. See Also: A Tale in the Desert.

Not only that, but ATitD is one of the few MMOs that actually ENDS (*gasp*!) Each time it ends, it starts over again, but with new features and professions. The current "Telling" (number 5) started in August 2010.

AtitD also is much more hardcore than this is. I suspect largely because it DOES have an end. This is a casual MMO. I love that you can not do it for weeks without repercussions. I will likely give it a little try, and if it strikes me well I'll recommend it.

"I asked Butterfield when I would acquire awesome guns, and he informed me that there were no awesome guns. Not one! I then inquired about RPGs and more conventional grenades only to be likewise informed that they were absent. I then became concerned that it was not a game."

That's kind of how it felt after the second time he points out how he's shocked that there's no fighting. We've had games without combat for almost as long as we've had games available to consumers.

I think games like these pull in a demographic because plenty of people who find games appealing don't want things that require overt hostility to something else, be it another player or an NPC. Diner Dash and Farmville do quite well without it.

I played the game last night for a bit and got my girlfriend to play it too. She likes Farmville, Harvest Moon and Fishville so this games seems to be up her alley. We both liked the game. I love the cutsy and funny creatures and what you do to get some of the items. Squeeze a chicken for grain, Nibble a pig for meat and always Pet everything. For the first month of a game, this seems to be pretty well thought out. The developers are wanting to expand so players can eventually create zones and fully customize a house and a group (read guild) house.

Dare I ask how this differs from something like Second Life? I'm not a Second Life expert either, but I was under the impression that in SL you also had no combat and could do weird things, build houses, etc.

Dare I ask how this differs from something like Second Life? I'm not a Second Life expert either, but I was under the impression that in SL you also had no combat and could do weird things, build houses, etc.

* SL is 3D, Glitch is a platform scroller.* SL is extensible (programmable, skinnable, etc) by users, Glitch does not currently provide these liberties as far as I can tell.* SL has no global concepts of XP, skills, money, physics, etc. These things can be programmed in by users but their changes only apply to the zones they have programming control over. Glitch is more game-oriented than SL.

(I may be wrong. I've never used SL and only spent about 30 minutes playing Glitch just now.)

I was part of the Alpha and Beta phases of Glitch, and I have to say that the development team seems to know what they're doing. They've carved out their own little niche, and, based on their comments, are willing to fight to the death to remain in that niche -- and in this case I think that's the right approach. I will say that I haven't actually gone back since it went public, but I did have a lot of fun playing it.

I played this for a few hours (5 maybe, over the course of a couple days), and I've yet to find the fun. It's always modestly interesting to play a new game, and this one has lots of amusing character, but it seems to be entirely lacking in anything skill or story related. I've yet to find anything to make me think, "This has potential to be interesting in the long run." If you're really into graphical chat rooms, or games like Farmville, this one may suite you, but I suspect most Arsians won't really be into it.

Bummer, really. I'd LOVE something like A Tale in the Desert that wasn't quite so time intensive (and free would be nice).

I don't blame them, but it irks me when authors of these types of articles write in such a way as to make an idea like Glitch seem new. It isn't new. I could have written this article in a tweet:"Some guy made a Flash Animal Crossing sans animals. EOS."

I've been playing for a few weeks, and I really like the skill based progression.

Sure you can earn levels, but the real power comes into play by learning new that take real life time to master. You can start learning Herbalism II one night, and when you wake up, your avatar can now plant things in his or her garden much quicker than before!

It's actually kind of cool.

And it's not just about crafting. There are mini-games (capture the flag, king of the hill, races), exploration (secret areas, platforming aspects), and something called the Rook Attack - which I know nothing about, but I hear it's a fun event that happens under the right circumstances.

I tried Glitch based on this article. It would lead you to believe this game is a shared dream. Like a dream, it is not quite what it seems. There are rules and quest, but no goals. You are tossed rewards to make you feel good. So far, this game is a cute and fun time waister.

My favorite part of this experiment/exhibition is the remarks made by ?god? Based on the tone I don't consider this a family game. So far I have seen references to masturbation and an item called "High-Class Hoe". I though it was funny, but I didn't recall seeing a game rating. Otherwise, perhaps I need to play further to see the point of this game or it's target audience. (other than making money for tiny speck)

So far this seems game seems a blend of Second Life and Maplestory. I think this project needs to become an art-for-arts-sake game. You gain experience points and/or game money if others like what you have created. Since this company had ties to Flickr it may understand letting participants create multimedia areas that others could observe or interact with. Fill this space with art, music, sound prose, stories etc..

Also, the Giants seem to want attention from the players. Hopefully this will matter in the future. An earlier post stated that this game needs a story and a mystery. Hopefully this shared dream will let us create that vs. the "developers". This aspect will help make it unique.

Not a game for me, but my wife is excited. She loves the Animal Crossing games and world-creating in the Dark Cloud series. She will have something to do while I figure out how to cross another @#*^ mountain in Skyrim.

My girlfriend and I tried this. My girlfriend was really really interested in it, but after we played it it didn't feel like there was a lot of collaboration going on at all. In other games, like in WoW, you party with your friends, do quests together, explore the world, level up. Even in Animal Crossing, you can visit someone else's town, take their peaches, and trade them for your apples or buy things in their shop, and after you leave the neighbours will still talk about you.

We didn't really get the feeling of cooperation going on in Glitch based on our about two hours of playing. The most you seemed to need other players for was to give them things, or to "kiss" them/hug them/etc as part of quests.

Also, I didn't really enjoy how quests randomly appeared, it made the game directionless. You did things and then hoped that the familiar would give you something to do (it appears linked to your current level, as well as to whatever skill you finished learning). As someone said, this game feels like someone took the worst aspects of crafting from other MMORPGs and put them all into one game. All that I was able to figure out so far was to pet animals and trees for 20 minutes until your skills trained up. And what do you get to do? Mine, learn to cook? I guess so.

Even though my girlfriend wanted to like it she didn't really feel the vibe from it either.

Also, as someone said above me, the game's humour is quite... perverted. There's a lot of double entendre going on. Fortunately it's written in a subtle way, so someone who's clueless probably won't catch on, but if I had a child who played I'd probably be secretly afraid that she'll say a line from the game while guests are over or something.

Concept is pretty neat but I hope to see a bit more evolve from it. Maybe more co-operative "discovery" elements or some skill-based tasks with friends.